There were more mentions of gender in last night's debate than I expected (in particular Clinton said "women" a lot), and I want to bring up some of them for discussion.

Full transcript here.

Women and Children!

First is Clinton saying that she's "not going to slam the door on women and children" in reference to refugees. Is there any possible justification of this from the perspective of gender equality, or is it just plain old traditionalism that, because it helps women, appeals to many women's activists and people on the left, in addition to actual traditionalists on the right?

But I want to respond to what Donald said about refugees. He has made these claims repeatedly. I am not going to let anyone into this country who is not vetted, who we do not have confidence in.

But I'm not going to slam the door on women and children. That picture of that little 4-year-old boy in Aleppo with the blood coming down his face while he sat in an ambulance is haunting. And so we are going to do very careful, thorough vetting that does not solve our internal challenges with ISIS and our

Clinton on "Families"

On a few occasions, Clinton characterized her career and life's work as being about "children and families". This sounded suspiciously like "women and children", but it is possible that she actually does focus her career on families that aren't just women and children (and includes two parent heterosexual households, singe dads, and two gay male parents). For people who are actually American and know her record better than I do, is "children and families" here just "women and children", or is it really about families?

So I'm happy to compare my 30 years of experience, what I've done for this country, trying to help in every way I could, especially kids and families get ahead and stay ahead with your 30 years. And I'll let the American people make that decision.

[...]

And I know the awesome responsibility of protecting our country and the incredible opportunity of working to try to make life better for you. I have made the cause of children and families really my life's work.

Equal Pay for Women

Clinton said that she wants to make sure that women get equal pay. In the context of the earnings gap seemingly being mostly about women and men working different hours in different fields (which are themselves fair points to discuss) rather than actual pay discrimination, does just talking about discrimination (which is what I understand from the way she said it) misleading?

I want to make sure that women get equal pay for the work we do.

Trump "belittles women"

Clinton talked about how Trump "belittles" women and what he says about women. Is Trump actually harder on women when he speaks, or is this just her (and others) being more concerned about how we talk to women? Here's a list of some of Trump's insults. He called CNN's Don Lemon "a lightweight" and "dumb as a rock". He said about Rand Paul: "reminds me of a spoiled brat without a properly functioning brain", "truly weird", "lowly", "didn't get the right gene". Perhaps he targets women's appearance more, and that's gendered. But is that necessarily worse? Also, he's attacked men for their looks (Rand Paul --- even if not as often) and he's used gendered attacks on men too. He called Marco Rubio "Little Marco" in reference to his height, which is clearly gendered. Rubio is 5-foot-10, and compare that to Clinton's 5-foot-5, but he hasn't (to my knowledge) made any references to her height.

Clinton: He went on to say look at her. I don't think so. About another woman, he said that wouldn't be my first choice. He attacked the woman reporter writing the story, called her disgusting as he has called a number of women during this campaign. Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don't think there is a woman anywhere who doesn't know what that feels like.

So we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts towards women.

I'm interested in people's thoughts.

Also to note, this was all questioning Clinton because she's the one who referenced gender so much more. I don't actually like Trump at all, so this shouldn't be interpreted as a pro-Trump post. There were also many things I'd criticize about Trump in the debates: especially not pledging to accept the result (unless he has very credible evidence of cheating, it's just downright scary to think that he's going to contest the result), and the fact that at the last debate he pledged political influence on prosecution of her emails is also very scary.